COMMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS

COMMENT: My sports minded conservative friends must be beside themselves today. Their beloved television network, Fox, has threatened to pull the plug on its broadcast affiliation with Time Warner cable network and its affiliate Brighthouse unless Time Warner agrees to pay several million dollars more in broadcast-right fees. Time Warner has thus far refused and Fox Network may disconnect from Time Warner before the big Citrus Bowl game later today. Negotiations are ongoing.

Here’s the problem for my conservative friends. They believe that government should stay the hell out of negotiations between private (non-public) companies, but some of them want the government or the courts to intervene and compel Fox to allow Time Warner broadcast rights until after the Citrus Bowl game.

Frankly, I agree with the conservative position. The government (local, state or national) should stay out of the matter. It’s a football game, not a national emergency. No one’s life is threatened. If some businesses will suffer loss due to the disconnect, too bad. That’s the cost of doing business with Fox Network and Time Warner.

Let’s hope that politicians learned something from the Terri Shiavo debacle. Government leaders, in far away Washington, DC yet, had no business butting in to a Florida case that had been decided by a Florida court. They did, however, and it turned into an embarrassing mess. Let’s hope they are smarter this time around.

Politicians smarter? Now that’s funny.  Politicians are sheep; they follow their leader.  They are concerned with getting reelected and getting legislations passed that will benefit their constituents, i.e, get them reelected.  On all other matters, refer to rule one: follow their leadership.

OBSERVATION: The maple trees in central Florida seem to think it is fall.  They are turning brilliant shades of yellow, orange and red ... and dropping their leaves to the ground.  I guess they have to do it sometime.  They are after all deciduous trees and that means they lose their leaves once a year.  Just the same, it is strange to this New York boy when out walking this time of year (January 1) to see tree leaves turning color and falling to the ground like it was September or October.  Raking leaves is incongruous with this time of year.

OBSERVATION: We typically assign the word miracle to any circumstance we cannot explain.  We do not call it a miracle when the sun comes up every morning because we know why and how that happens. 
Even though we may not understand all the electronics involved, we watch television without once thinking of it as a miracle.  No, we reserve the use of the word "miracle" for those instances in which something happens that we nor anyone can explain.

My observation is this: we call good things that happen a miracle.  We never call it a miracle when something bad happens.

A man is driving his car down the road at a reasonable speed when another car, a speeding, out of control car, hits him head on.  His car is demolished.  He has to be cut out of the car by firemen using the jaws of life.  "Miraculously" he lives.  He literally walks away after being freed with a few cuts, scratches and bruises.  He is amazed.  The firemen are amazed.  They've never seen anyone survive such a terrible head-on collision.  It is a miracle, we say.

It may not be so much of a miracle after all.  Seat belts, air bags, collapsible steering columns and other features engineered into his car in anticipation of just such an accident may explain his good fortune.  We don't know that for sure, may never know for certain, but it is possible that no divine or other world intervention was involved, just good safety engineering.

We can believe what we want and some of us will believe this man's survival is a miracle.  We will even say things like, "God must have other plans for him." or "It surely wasn't his time."  The statement suggesting that the god we worship has an plan for each of us (meaning, I guess, that our destiny is out of our hands) or that we have a built-in clock ticking away our hours and minutes until "our time is up," again without regard to anything we do or do not do.

OK, be that as it may.  We are free to believe whatever we want and to explain it, rationalize it, and defend it however we choose.  But consider the following.

A man is driving down the road at a reasonable speed when an approaching car veers into his lane, clips his left front fender causing him to swerve right, jump the curb and smack into a fireplug.  His body lurches forward and his head bumps the steering wheel.  His seat belt stops him from smashing into the windshield, but the crash is so slight that the airbags do not even deploy.  A "minor" accident from which we all would expect the driver to walk away, a bit shaken perhaps, but alive and well.

Nonetheless, the man dies.

Why isn't that a miracle?  Why isn't it a miracle that the man died from such an insignificant bump?  We can't explain his death.  There is no rational or obvious mechanical reason for him dying.  If we are going to ascribe the word miracle to situations we do not understand or cannot explain, why isn't this a miracle?

Can our god only be involved when good things happen?  How are we then to explain the plane crash where 100 people die and 40 people live?  Was it a miracle that the 40 lived?  Or was it a miracle that the 100 died?  Did god have special plans for the 40 who lived and no further use for the 100 he let die?  Or was there no miracle involved, no divine intervention, no science-fiction or psychic explanation except it was a tragic accident -- a puzzle the FAA will try to solve.

It's just an observation.  Think about it and tell me what you think.